There is another article there which tries to explain the decline in religion and rise in atheism in the USA. I tend to think both authors missed the point. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19262884
If you do a post on that I’ll be interested in your thoughts (and will be happy to share mine).

Thankfully, frescos are literally part of the wall. If she used oil or acrylic paint – and lets face it, if that’s the best she can do art wise then I don’t expect anything more then common student grade paints – then it can be removed with little damage if done quickly.

Well, keep in mind that we don’t really make mistakes…we only have happy accidents. It’s not going to look like Jesus anytime soon, but if you just keep painting, it could be…a…a treestump! Couldn’t it be a happy little treestump, overlooking a happy little lake, with some happy little clouds in the sky? Just keep painting, and remember, the important thing is that you have fun with painting. God bless. /Bob Ross

I don’t know, the more I look on it, the more I realize how amazing the new painting is. Really the old one doesn’t look like a masterpiece, and if it really is only 100 years old than it is really just a nice-ish copy of centuries old techniques. Hackery.

On the other hand this amateur has created something truly unique and I think artistic. The God-man, perfect in form, is transformed in the hands of his worshiper into something else. A mock-man, misshapen and grotesque. Yet eerily beautiful. There is more emotion in the eyes of the new painting than in that passionless mask that it grew from.

I find the contrasts between Jesus-1 and Jesus-2 to be quite evocative. This is the type of contemporary art I can get behind!

I cannot help but to feel judged by those hollow-black eyes. He knows my indiscretion, how I have failed to live up to my promises. It’s an utterly indifferent knowledge, almost like a bird–say, a crow–but he knows.